Fann þetta á netinu fyrir nokkru.
One Little Fish and Thelma L. Simpson
The recent death of Thelma Hobson Simpson, of Parker, hardly created a ripple except among the family and friends who loved and enjoyed her. She was an
exceptional woman, but never a woman destined for fame. All of her adult life she quietly performed her duties as housewife, mother and grandma, and that would have
been quite enough. But tucked away in the memories of almost every person there is some moment of fame, glory or history, and so it was with Simpson. It bears
telling.
Mrs.. Simpson's moment came unexpectantly, Unplanned. In the late 1950s, she had taken on a home job, which was no mere job to her; she loved it. She started a
wholesale tropical fish business in the garage, raising healthy, live-bearing fish for sale to retail outlets. Soon, the large garage was crowded with fish tanks, breeding
hundreds of thousands of beautiful fish that would grace the homes and offices of Southern Californians.
Simpson always had an eye for detail. She could unfailingly spot a sick fish in a crowded tank, even when the symptoms were not yet obvious to anyone else. That's
why the retailers loved her. They never bought sick fish from the Simpson hatchery. That sharp eye one day spotted a male swordtail fish with a dorsal fin longer than
any she had previously seen. Thinking that "he was cute," she isolated him and bred him separately. Remarkably, the dorsal fins of the offspring, both male and
female, became longer and longer, until they swept back past the tail. This was incredibly unique for the female, and virtually overnight the "Hi-fins" became a
sensation. Within a few months, the news spread like a brush fire through Southern California, then pressed across the nation.
Direct orders filled the mailbox for the Simpson Hi-fin Swordtail from more and more distant retail stores. The rush was on. The Hi-fins made a 1960 cover of Dr..
Axelrod's renowned tropical fish magazine, and therefore reached the world. By 1961, orders from Mozambique, Argentina and Europe became common. In
Germany, the fish made their second cover, and the international airlines became increasingly accustomed to shipping small plastic bags of tropical fish across the
world. Did Mrs. Simpson make a fortune? No. A 39-cent (wholesale) fish was now selling (by others) for as much as $20 each, but Simpson seemed not to have the
expertise to control marketing prices of a monopoly. But, if she cared about a potential fortune lost, she never let it be known. She loved her remarkable fish. Perhaps that was all that she wanted to do, to populate the world with very beautiful things.
Story by Morgan w. Simpson